


The Amestrian Waltz

by raisingmybanner



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Past Neglect, Post-Canon, Post-Promised Day, Romance, Slow Burn, Young Alphonse Elric, Young Riza Hawkeye, Young Roy Mustang
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-27 11:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30122283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisingmybanner/pseuds/raisingmybanner
Summary: A story about noticing the things that have been under your nose the whole time, and a story about deciding when to finally let them free. An orange sweater, a shape in the clouds, a protector of the stars."Who are you?" a little boy asks. "I was your lieutenant," replies a woman with a cracked heart, unsure what else to say.[Updates Sunday and Thursday]
Relationships: Edward Elric/Winry Rockbell, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 21
Kudos: 55





	1. Part 1 - Chapter 1

Roy’s hands are on the ground, which is a strange place for them to be.

For a moment, he thinks he’s been pushed down and just managed to catch himself. Some of the kids at school again, maybe. Or maybe he tripped on something at the bar. There’s murmuring in the background, but he can’t catch the words.

The fact that he doesn’t know whether he’s at school or at home is the first red flag.

The second red flag is the fact that his hands are resting on some kind of lines that have been drawn on the floor. Something about the curve and unintelligible runes looks almost familiar. Not because he knows what it is, but because it reminds him of something. But his brain can’t put it together quickly enough to be helpful, and the murmuring gets louder. It distracts him as he tries to focus on the words, but they evade him. The tone of the murmuring voice is edging into panic before another voice, closer and louder, interrupts it.

“Don’t scare him, Edward. Mustang?”

This voice is clear, but he doesn’t recognize it. A new floor girl? They never call him Mustang, though. That would be confusing, with his aunt around all the time.

His mind is hopping around, trying to fill in blanks and make sense of everything, but there’s too much to take in. Who are these people? Where is he? How did he get here? Why can’t he remember _anything?_

His body moves on autopilot, pushing off the ground and standing. The most immediate thing is the voice, and he turns to face it as he brushes off his hands. He’s distracted once again as he turns, though, because he realizes he’s wearing clothes that are far too large for him. A comically-large shirt, one that seems to be made for a giant — or perhaps an adult — hangs off his shoulders and most of the way to his knees. The sleeves billow past his hands, and he pushes them up by instinct. Clownish pants are thankfully held up by suspenders that he can feel on his shoulders as well, and an experimental wiggle of his toes reveals shoes twice the size of his feet.

It becomes immediately apparent that he is neither at school nor at the bar when he lifts his eyes to his surroundings. Unfamiliar stone walls without windows frame the large room. The drawing on the floor that he had been touching is large — a circle maybe ten feet in diameter. A small stool with an empty jar on it sits in the middle of the circle. Past the circle are a few tables — workbenches — with all sorts of strange paraphernalia on them. Science equipment, books, loose papers, pieces of metal and machinery that remind him of the automail he’s studied in books.

There’s movement of white cloth in the corner of his eye and he keeps turning, trying to focus. His mind is flailing; he can understand that much even if he can’t do anything about it. He’s trying in vain to see, to understand, to find _anything_ that would make this make _any sense._

“It’s me, Al,” the panicked voice says, and the movement gets more agitated.

“Are you hurt, sir?” asks the woman’s voice again, and a person steps in front of him, completely blocking his line of sight on the person in white.

She’s too old to be a floor girl, Roy knows at once on instinct, though she’s pretty enough to be one by half. Light hair pulled loosely away from her face. Eyes the color of chocolate and the branches of the beech tree outside his bedroom window at home.

He wonders why Madame Christmas hired her, if she’s too old, then frowns as he remembers again that this isn’t the bar. Why is he having trouble remembering that?

The woman’s voice sounds a bit strange, and her brow is furrowed as her eyes cast over him. Some part of Roy’s mind tries to decipher the tone of the woman’s voice, but the rest of it is too busy trying to figure out _where_ he is and _how_ he got here.

Then another part of his mind registers that she called him _sir._

“Mustang,” the woman says, reaching for him as her eyes fill with something he finally recognizes as concern.

He watches her hand as it stops just short of his shoulder and hesitates.

“Where am I?” he asks, looking back to the woman’s eyes. “Who are you?”

She just stares at him for a moment, her warm brown eyes shuttering down any emotion he could have read there. Even the concern evaporates as she turns into a blank portrait, devoid of life. Only her skin paling and her hand jerking back to her side gives Roy any indication that she reacted at all.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asks, her voice gentle and firm as she holds his gaze.

“Where _am I?”_ he repeats, folding his arms as the danger of the situation finally pushes through all the confusion.

He had been kidnapped, obviously. That was the only explanation. He’s not sure how, exactly, or why, but Madame Christmas had prepared him for this possibility, after he had come to live with her. She had enemies, she said, and enemies always exploited your weaknesses.

Children were, unfortunately, a weakness.

His clothes aren’t his own, which means that he won’t have the knife inside of his sock that he usually did when he was anywhere other than school. But if he’s lucky, he’ll be able to find something serviceable.

“You’re in Resembool,” the woman says, her voice still gentle and firm. She sounds like a schoolteacher, Roy thinks, which annoys him. Does she really think he’ll just do whatever she says because she sounds _nice?_

Roy presses his arms tight to his body, feeling nothing but fabric between them and his chest. Nothing in any shirt pockets, then. He drops his arms to his sides in what he hopes is a nonchalant fashion.

“How did I get here, and who are you?” he asks, hoping to keep her attention on his face as he presses against his pants pockets.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” the woman says. “But if you pull a weapon on me, sir, I will have to disarm you.”

“Is the General _threatening you?”_ says the other voice from behind her, no longer panicked but instead incredulous. “Can the little twerp even _lift_ a gun?”

“Don’t give him any ideas,” the woman says, deadpan, without turning around.

A gun? Does he have a _gun_?

“I guess he wouldn’t have a gun,” the other voice is still talking. “He couldn’t shoot it, now, anyway. Ack!”

The woman turns backward at the sudden exclamation from behind her, and Roy shoves his hands in his pockets, looking for anything useful. His fingers dance over a pocket watch, something that feels like folded bills, and finally, a collapsible knife that’s folded safely into itself. It feels ridiculously large, like the clothing, but it should work. He palms it and pulls his hands out of his pockets again before the woman sees.

She’s saying something to the other voice, still turned around, and Roy carefully steps out of the shoes. The pant legs flopping over his feet will be enough to slow him down without those boats to trip him up.

A child’s wailing starts up on the other side of the room, and that surprises Roy enough that he almost doesn’t see the woman turn back around to him.

“I’ll explain everything I can,” she says, meeting his gaze once more. “But I need to help Ed with Alphonse first.”

He almost believes her. Her eyes are so warm. He’s seen a lot of pretty eyes since coming to live with his aunt, but true warmth was much more rare. Children are a weakness and a burden, and not many of the girls had ever looked at him like anything other than a cute doll or a minor nuisance.

The way this woman looks at him now is like confidence and kindness mixed together into something more than the sum of its parts, and the second it takes for Roy to shake that off is a second more than it should have been. Madam Christmas would knock him around the ears if she ever found out.

It was all the confusion, he tells himself, feeling the knife against his palm. He can’t think straight. His mind is still flailing around. _Focus on the problem, and solve it,_ he tells himself sternly _._ There’s too much that he doesn’t know, and as much as he wants to understand everything, he knows that the most important thing right now is to get _away._

So when the woman turns around fully and walks over to the crying child and shouting voice behind her, Roy lets his eyes slide around the room until he finds a door. The only door in the room, slightly ajar with light shining through the crack.

He waits five seconds, ten, until the woman is holding a struggling child and talking to him, wiping tears from his face.

He wonders who the child is, why he’s crying. _It’s not important_ , he reminds himself, unused to leaving his curiosity hanging. _It’s not important._ He has to escape.

Then Roy starts moving for the door. He’s quiet, moving as fast as he can without making noise. He pulls up the pant legs as he walks, freeing his feet in their overlarge socks and holding wads of fabric in his hands. It makes holding the knife difficult, but he manages. He keeps his eyes on the woman, and the man next to her, as they fuss with the child.

The man in white has long blonde hair pulled back into a tail, and he looks like the kind of man one of the floor girls would have as a boyfriend on the side. The kind that would roll his eyes and kiss the girl against the bar while the other girls laughed and whooped and Madame Christmas yelled about business hours.

It’s strange to see a man like that reasoning with a crying child and pulling funny faces at him until he starts to laugh. It’s strange, but it isn’t important it _isn’t important._

Roy reaches the door and slides through, then turns around to see a set of stairs going up into what looks like daylight.

Windowless room. Basement. The information slots into place with relief — finally an answer of some kind, even if it’s only the smallest one.

Then he moves up the stairs as quickly as he can without making noise. The adults hadn’t seemed to notice him leave, and he wants as much of a headstart as he can get.

At the top of the stairs is another door, which is open into a dining room. He blinks at the bright sunlight streaming through the windows and looks left and right, getting his bearings. A worn wooden table sits in the dining room, surrounded by six chairs in various states of order. A plate and fork, clearly used, sit on the table in front of the chair nearest him.

The left offers a wall that might lead to a hallway around the corner, and the right has a half-open door.

He hears the man shout something behind him, and his heart jumps into his throat.

 _Time to run,_ he tells himself, gritting his teeth and pounding for the door. It leads to a small kitchen, and another door takes him into a living room.

“General!” the man’s voice says.

He hears a door slam and jumps, running faster as he sees the front door. _Finally._

But the person chasing him knows the house better than he does, and he only just grabs the knob before there’s a hand on his arm spinning him around.

“Mustang!” the man shouts, and his face is contorted in a way that slams fear through Roy’s chest.

The knife is open in his hand before he even gets his balance.

“Don’t touch me!” Roy shouts, pointing the knife at the man.

“Geez, General,” the man says, letting go of his arm and putting his hands up. “Be careful! You’re gonna hurt yourself!”

“I’m going to hurt _you_ if you don’t let me go _right now!”_ Roy says, still holding the knife toward the man and backing toward the door. “I know how to use a knife!”

“I’m sure you do,” the man says, but he’s looking less angry by the moment. He looks almost amused now. “How old are you, anyway? Eight?”

“I’m ten, not that it’s any business of yours,” Roy snaps. “Don’t follow me.”

“Put the knife down.”

“You’re not very organized for a bunch of kidnappers,” Roy mutters, narrowing his eyes.

“Kidnappers?” the man looks startled, then snorts. “As if anyone would kidnap you, General. Don’t make me laugh.”

Roy puts a hand on the doorknob, and the smile vanishes off the man’s face.

“Put the knife down,” the man says, his voice serious. “Or I’ll have to take it from you.”

“You can try,” Roy says, mind already whirling on the best way out of the situation. If the man just takes his eyes off him for a moment—

The man steps forward, eyes flicking to the knife, and Roy sidesteps, throwing the door open with far more force than necessary. It slams into the man, and Roy bolts out of the door, stumbling down the three porch steps and barely keeping his feet. He makes it another five steps before there are arms around him and he’s on the ground. The knife is twisted out of his hand and thrown aside an instant before he and the man both hit the ground and tumble.

“That was dirty,” the man informs him as Roy squirms fruitlessly in the iron grip. “For being so high and mighty all the time. I didn’t think you had it in you, General.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” Roy asks through gritted teeth. “Is this some strange brainwashing ritual? I don’t know anything. I can’t tell you anything. Just let me go — home. Let me go, and I won’t turn you in.”

“You’re either a coward or a dumb idiot,” the man says, and Roy can feel him pull in a deep breath as he adjusts his hold to pin Roy with only one arm. Roy can feel the man’s strong chest moving against his back. The man lets it out in a sigh that ruffles Roy’s hair. “Knowing you, my money’s on idiot.”

“Edward?”

The man, Edward, pushes up to a sitting position without relaxing the grip that’s keeping Roy’s arms pinned to his sides. The woman is on the porch, holding the hand of the child from the basement. The kid is blond, and looks a lot like Edward. Their kid, probably. He’s only got an oversized shirt on, and his stocky legs poke out of the bottom with their bare feet.

“Got him!” Edward says brightly, squeezing Roy. Roy turns to glare at him, trying to wriggle free. But the man’s grip is a vice.

The woman sighs.

“Did you _have_ to tackle him, Ed?”

“He had a knife!” Edward protests. “I didn’t want to hurt him! Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”

“I don’t even know what’s going on,” the woman says with another sigh.

“You’re kidnapping me,” Roy supplies with irritation. “Poorly.”

“Not doing that bad of a job, pipsqueak,” Edward points out, “since we still have you.”

“Edward!” the woman says sharply, and Edward rolls his eyes.

“Not that we _are_ kidnapping you,” Edward says with reluctance. “You came here on your own.”

“I did not,” Roy says. “You’re not good at brainwashing, either.”

“Brain—? Lieutenant, I can’t deal with this. He’s twice as annoying like this — no — three times as annoying. Which is saying a lot, when he already made me want to pull my hair out!”

“Take Al,” the woman, the Lieutenant, says, stepping off the porch with the little blond boy.

“Daddy!” Alphonse says happily, running to Edward with his hands up.

“Come on, Al,” Edward says, and it’s his turn to sigh now.

He stands up, hauling Roy to his feet by his arm. Al clambers halfway up Edward’s frame as the man swears under his breath before the Lieutenant takes Roy’s arm in a grip just as strong as Edward’s.

“Let’s find you some clothes that fit, and then we can talk,” the woman says, pulling him inside.

“No!” Roy says, digging in his heels. “Take me home right now! Or else my — my aunt will find me, and she’ll make you sorry.”

Roy doesn’t know for sure how Madame Christmas would do that, but he feels completely confident that she would.

“I can’t take you home,” the Lieutenant says gently. “You came here because it wasn’t — because you couldn’t be home right now.”

“I didn’t _come here,”_ Roy argues. The woman is better at brainwashing than Edward, but not by much. “You _kidnapped me.”_

“I can’t kidnap you,” she says, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her free hand. “You’re thirty-two. Though I suppose it would still be called kidnapping even if you were an adult, wouldn’t it?”

Her mouth twists in an expression that Roy can’t identify, but it’s gone in an instant.

“I’ll scream,” he says, pulling against her grip. It doesn’t budge. He knows he can’t overpower her, but he also knows that people listen when a child screams. Most of the time.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” she says, sounding annoyingly practical. “There’s not a house for miles, and it would just hurt everyone’s ears.”

Roy looks around and sees that she’s right. He was too busy struggling and trying to run to realize that they were in the middle of the country. There isn’t another structure of any kind within sight. Only an old dirt road that disappears over the gently rolling hills.

“Did you say I’m thirty-two?” Roy says, that piece of information only just now poking through the mass of panicked confusion.

“Yes,” she says.

“Why do you say that I’m thirty-two?”

“Because I’m thirty, and you’ve always been two years older than me.”

Roy narrows his eyes at her, because that sounds like a joke. But her face is serious, her mouth a thin line.

Silence stands between them for a moment, stretching and pulling and giving his brain a moment to clear. Nothing makes sense, but questions start bubbling to the surface. Too fast to do anything other than ask them. He doesn’t know what to do with questions other than ask them or swallow them, and he thinks he might choke if he does the latter.

“Why does that man keep calling me ‘General’?”

“Because that is your rank in the military.”

“A general?”

“Major General, yes.”

“Who are you?”

“I was your lieutenant for several years.”

“How long did you work for me?”

“Eight years.”

“How did I get here?”

“The train, probably. I’m not sure. You work at Eastern command, which isn’t too far from here by train.”

Roy narrows his eyes at her again. She’s answering all of his questions without hesitation, which makes the idea that this is all a strange and elaborate fabrication less likely. Though the alternative, that he somehow _is_ thirty-two, seems even less likely than that.

The woman doesn’t let go of his arm, but she doesn’t pull him back inside, either. Edward and Alphonse are chattering away inside the house, where they went somewhere in the middle of all the questioning.

“If I’m thirty-two,” he says finally, “then why do I look like — this?”

He gestures down at himself, swimming in clothes far too large for him.

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” the Lieutenant says, and her voice is gentle again. “I just arrived an hour ago. You called me and said — you asked me to come. Edward met me at the station coming from the other direction, and we came here together. Then there was the transmutation circle and everything happened so quickly…”

She trails off helplessly, then rubs the bridge of her nose again.

“We’ll fix this, s— mmm. We’ll fix this. We just need to figure out what happened.”

“Transmutation circle?” he asks slowly, thinking of the drawing on the floor. “That was — alchemy?”

“I — yes,” she says, looking up at him and blinking. “I suppose you don’t know much about alchemy, do you? If you don’t remember me, or your job, I suppose whatever happened — well, never mind. How old are you, now?”

“Ten,” Roy says, peeved at the same question being asked in such a short span of time. They really were disorganized kidnappers, if they didn’t even know how _old_ he was.

“You’re ten,” she repeats, and there are still those shutters over her warm eyes, keeping him from knowing what she’s thinking. “All right. Will you come inside so we can find you some clothes?”

“No!” Roy says, pulling his arm free from her grip and stepping backward. “Stop brainwashing me! I want to go — home!”

For some reason, tears spring to his eyes when he says this. It’s humiliating, and he wills them to suck back into his head. Crying only makes everything _worse._

The woman bites her lip again, but doesn’t grab him. The look on her face is sad, even though it doesn’t reach her eyes. Roy thinks she must be a much better kidnapper than Edward, since this is the second time she’s almost kept him from running away. Even if it’s mostly because he seems to be alarmingly bad at being kidnapped, all things considered.

“What will it take to convince you that I’m not lying?” she asks, and her voice is softer than it has any right to be. That just makes him _angry_.

“Take me — home,” he challenges. “If you’re really not kidnapping me, and I’m really thirty-two, then you have no reason not to.”

“I can’t,” the woman says, rubbing her nose again. “You said — it’s not safe.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs.

“Can’t you even bother to come up with a fake reason?” Roy snaps. “You’re terrible at this!”

“I know,” the woman says, so quietly that Roy thinks he probably wasn’t supposed to hear it. “I could show you a newspaper, but I’m sure you’ll say—“

“Those are incredibly easy to fake,” Roy interrupts, and the woman nods.

“Yes, I thought as much.”

“How’s it going?” Edward shouts from the porch.

Roy glares at him, and Edward pulls a face.

“Now that’s just creepy,” he complains. “It’s the same glare, but you’re a _kid.”_

The Lieutenant rubs the bridge of her nose.

“Who are _you?”_ Roy shouts at Edward.

“In charge of you, for once,” Edward replies, with something of a manic energy in his eyes. “I’m gonna enjoy this.”

“Are you still trying to convince me that I’m not being kidnapped?” Roy asks the woman, pointing at Edward.

She doesn’t say anything. Her eyes are on his feet, and her brow is slightly furrowed.

“Come inside,” she finally says. “I don’t want to force you, but I will.”

“I thought this wasn’t a kidnapping.”

“I’m just following orders.”

“Who—“

“Yours,” she interrupts, and her eyes flick up to his. She’s almost frowning, looking as serious as she has since Roy found himself here in this strange place. “And I know you had a good reason.”

“What reason?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “But you always do.”

Roy just stares at her, trying to force his mind to think his way out of this situation. But it feels like it’s hiccuping and stalling, which is in itself terrifying. He’s always been able to rely on his mind, and to have it fail now when he needs it most … it makes him want to roll up in a blanket and never come out.

The only thing his mind can do is tell him quietly that this woman doesn’t look like a liar. He’s well-versed in liars, spending his evenings watching them from the safety of a stool behind the bar. The bar is always full of liars, in every shade and flavor. The floor girls are liars, and so is Madame Christmas. All the men who come to the bar are liars. The schoolteachers lie sometimes, and the students often do. He can always see it on people now, obvious like a cowlick or a shirt buttoned out of alignment. 

To see someone so devoid of lies is almost jarring, once he realizes that’s what he’s seeing. There are few people like that that he remembers, and this woman is one of them.

She speaks so carefully, so slowly, like her truthful words are her only currency and she wants to make every cent of them count.

“Does my adult self trust you?” he asks, and his voice sounds small and watery in a way that makes him feel younger than he is.

“Yes,” she says after only a blink of hesitation. “In this — yes.”

And she’s telling the truth.

“Alright,” he says, stepping forward.

“Alright,” she says, nodding once and turning to walk beside him into the house.

“What’s your name?” he asks as they step into the house.

“Riza,” she says, pulling the door closed behind them. “Riza Hawkeye. You can call me Riza. Or Hawkeye.”

“Which does my adult self call you?” he asks, pulling up his pant legs again before he trips.

“Captain, or Hawkeye,” she says.

“I thought you said you were a lieutenant.”

“I was, when I worked for you. I’m a captain now.”

Roy frowns, trying to create a hierarchy of military ranks in his mind. He doesn’t have enough information to complete it, so he leaves it unfinished and changes tacks.

“Does that mean you call me — Major… Major General? Or Mustang?”

“It’s just shortened to ‘General’ but, yes. What would you like me to call you?”

Roy frowns as she leads him to a set of stairs going up. ‘General’ would be weird, since he’s _not_ a general. Mustang sounds weird, too. Grown up. It makes him think of Madame Christmas and his—

“Just Roy,” he says.

She doesn’t say anything to that, but Roy is distracted by a dusty trunk full of clothes. She says they were Edward’s, which explains why they look like they haven’t been used in a while, but he finds things that look like they’ll fit. The woman — Miss Hawkeye — waits outside while he changes, but he can’t resist asking more questions as he struggles into clothes that smell like mothballs and don’t fit quite right.

“So this is alchemy?” he asks, double-checking the stiff buttons of the shirt before starting to do them up. “Whatever it is that’s happened?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice strong and clear through the door.

“Can it be undone?” he asks, searching his mind for some memory of how alchemy works.

There isn’t a lot of information available to the general public, and his curiosity and friendship with the Central Librarians only got him so far.

“I hope so,” she says. “But I’m not an alchemist. Neither — neither is Edward.”

“Do you know any other alchemists?” he questions, adjusting the belt around pants that are still too long for his legs.

“I — yes,” Miss Hawkeye says slowly. “But we can’t get them involved.”

“Because my older self said not to,” Roy says, cuffing up the pants as best he can.

“I sent a telegram to someone who might be able to help, but she’s not an alchemist. And Edward knows a lot about alchemy,” she says, and her lack of response is answer enough. “Are you done getting dressed? You should eat something.”

Roy pulls open the door, frowning up at Miss Hawkeye, who had been leaning against the wall by the door. Her eyes flick over him cursorily, taking in the rumpled shirt, cuffed pants, worn shoes.

“You found something that fits,” she says, pushing off the wall.

“Poorly,” Roy adds.

Miss Hawkeye’s mouth twitches, and Roy’s eyes narrow.

“I’m sorry we don’t have anything nicer available,” she says. “I’m sure you’re used to better.”

Roy thinks of his precisely five sets of almost identical clothing pieces that had appeared in the closet the morning after he came to live with Madame Christmas. Madame Christmas always had them replaced immediately whenever he grew or wore something out. He didn’t have anything flashy, but he was used to everything fitting properly. He hadn’t realized clothes could feel this uncomfortable.

“It’s fine,” he says, because it doesn’t really matter. He’ll get used to it. What’s more important is getting to the bottom of whatever this is. “Did you say there’s food?”

Miss Hawkeye smiles at that, and Roy is struck again with how pretty she is. He wonders if she _used_ to be a floor girl, before she worked for him. He files that away under questions to ask later.

“Nothing special, but yes,” she says.

Roy hadn’t realized he was hungry until the woman mentioned food. His stomach growls audibly and he glances up at her to see if she noticed. She’s looking away, so it’s hard to tell.

The food, as it turned out, is sandwiches. Roy digs into his with enthusiasm, almost forgetting Miss Hawkeye is there until she asks him a question.

“What do you like to eat? We can have better food tomorrow.”

Roy shrugs, his mouth full of sandwich.

“No opinion?” she presses, and he can hear the frown in her voice.

Roy isn’t sure how to say “anything that isn’t cooked in a huge pot and serves twenty people” without it being weird, so he just shakes his head.

“Hm,” she says. “I thought you’d be more — never mind. No favorite foods that your parents make you?”

Roy pauses mid-bite, his jaw locking up and the lump of food turning into a rock in his mouth. He can’t swallow it, but he can’t spit it back out either. First of all because it’s rude, and second of all because he can’t open his mouth.

He just shakes his head, willing the traitorous tears away.

“Roy?” Miss Hawkeye says, and her voice is achingly soft. Surprise layers under it, but only just. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean — you must miss them. I know this is a lot. You’re just so — I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t respond, and a tear escapes his eye, trickling down his nose. Miss Hawkeye makes a sound he can’t identify, and then there’s the scraping of a chair and she’s kneeling beside him, a hand on his shoulder.

He should pull away, he knows. He should yank out of her grip and remember that he’s being kidnapped and this is — this is —

But he’s not being kidnapped. He’s stuck here because of some alchemy that went wrong. Both things seem unreasonable, but the quiet voice deep inside of him knows that Miss Hawkeye is telling the truth, even if it doesn’t make sense.

And now he’s sitting in a chair he doesn’t recognize, wearing clothes that don’t fit, and thinking about his parents, for the first time in a long time. His _parents._ Nothing is right and nothing makes sense and everything is—

He manages to swallow the bite of sandwich before a sob overtakes him. He leans toward Miss Hawkeye without really meaning to, and before he knows it, her arm is around his back, a hand brushing the hair out of his eyes and stroking it as she makes little shushing noises over his crying.

“It’s alright,” she says, and he can feel her voice against his ear from where he is pressed against her chest. “It’s okay to cry, Roy. It’s a lot to take in, and you’re being very brave.”

That just makes him cry more, because all he can think about is his mother curling around him in her bed after he had a bad dream, running her fingers down his back and telling him to get it all out. Madame Christmas would never do that. Would never do this.

He wonders why his chest hurts, but he doesn’t know, and there’s too many things he doesn’t know.

He lets Miss Hawkeye hold him until the tears stop, wiping his face with a handkerchief and blowing his nose. It’s embarrassing, and he’s sure he’s gotten tears and snot on her shirt, but she doesn’t say anything about it, so he doesn’t either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is inspired by the only other de-aging fic I have ever read: Away Childish Things by lettered (https://archiveofourown.org/works/16052816/chapters/37478033)


	2. Part 1 - Chapter 2

“I can help,” Roy says staunchly, trying to lean surreptitiously to see past Miss Hawkeye’s hip.

She leans with him, so clearly he isn’t being surreptitious enough, which annoys him.

“I know that keeping Alphonse company is not very fun,” she says apologetically, “but what about the books I gave you? Are they not interesting enough? Are they — too difficult?”

“No,” he says, folding his arms and narrowing his eyes. “They’re fine, but Alphonse won’t leave me _alone_ to read them.”

The books were miles better than anything he had been able to get from the Central library, and even better than the books he remembered pulling down from the shelves of the study in his father’s— well, better than anything he had been able to read.

Miss Hawkeye had found them in the basement the day before, and Roy had spent the better part of the rest of the day curled up and reading them. It was slow going, since they seemed to refer to other books and research that Roy didn’t have, but they were interesting. Edward and Miss Hawkeye had gone back to the basement after getting Alphonse to sleep, and neither of them had seemed inclined to answer any questions.

The morning had already passed in much the same way after breakfast, with the adults disappearing to the basement, but the little kid was a chatterbox of questions that Roy couldn’t, or didn’t want to, answer. Every time he got to an interesting paragraph about chemical compounds or ratios, Alphonse would pop over the book asking what charcoal was made of or why paper was bendy.

_“It just is.”_

_“I want it flat!”_ Alphonse had declared, small eyebrows furrowing.

_“Paper_ is _flat,”_ Roy had responded, not looking up as he pushed Alphonse’s head out of the way.

_“Flat and not bendy!”_ Alphonse had retorted, thrusting his head back into view and blinking his amber eyes at Roy.

_“Then don’t bend it,”_ Roy said, gripping the book and turning away from Alphonse. _“Go draw on your paper.”_

_“I wanna draw on my lap but it’s bendy!”_ Alphonse whined.

_“Draw on the table.”_

_“I drawed better on my lap!”_

“I’m sorry,” Miss Hawkeye says, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

“Let me help,” Roy pleads.

Miss Hawkeye just looks at him, and Roy tries to remember what works on the floor girls when he really wants something.

He widens his eyes a little, bites his lip.

He can see Miss Hawkeye softening, and he hopes it’s enough.

“I’m really smart,” he offers hopefully. “I don’t know alchemy but I’ve already read all the science textbooks that Mrs. Fredrickson has in the classroom. And math.”

“What about the novels?” Miss Hawkeye asks, and Roy is opening his mouth to reply when he notices that she’s hiding a smile. She’s teasing him. It feels strange, since he doesn’t know her, but for some reason it doesn’t annoy him like it does when most people tease him about school.

“Please?” he says instead, and Miss Hawkeye smiles fully at that, even though she sighs as well.

“Alright,” she relents. “I’ll have to trade you for Edward, since Alphonse is too little to be in the house alone in this state. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to hear that.”

Roy recognizes her tone as sarcasm, a favorite among the floor girls, and decides to stay behind her in case Edward makes a weird and scary face again.

The basement looks exactly the same as yesterday, except that one of the workbenches is now covered in books and papers.

“Are you kidding? You think this pipsqueak can do a better job than me?” Edward shouts, slamming a book closed and glaring at Miss Hawkeye with an intensity that makes Roy want to pull her away from him.

“I think you can do a better job watching your brother,” Miss Hawkeye corrects, unfazed.

Edward’s eyes flick to Roy, then to his hand. Roy realizes with a jolt that he had grabbed Miss Hawkeye’s sleeve and lets go quickly. Edward doesn’t comment, but he frowns deeper.

“Fine,” he says, but he doesn’t sound happy about it. “Maybe I can convince Al that I’m not Hohenheim today.”

“The braid should help?” Miss Hawkeye offers, but she doesn’t sound convinced.

Edward just grumbles something as he walks away, scratching the back of his head, where his hair is neatly braided away from his face and down his back. Roy waits for Edward to disappear through the door before he turns to Miss Hawkeye.

“Alphonse is his _brother?”_ Roy asks, incredulous.

“Yes,” Miss Hawkeye says, sitting down at the worktable and picking up the book Edward had put down. “He also — was involved in the alchemical problem.”

“Oh — _oh,”_ Roy says, clambering up on the bench. “He was older too. Were we friends?”

“Sort of,” Hawkeye says, but it almost sounds like she’s laughing, which Roy doesn’t understand.

“I thought he was — he looks just like Edward,” Roy says without thinking about what he’s saying. His eyes are running over the notes, and the excitement of so much knowledge, so much research, spread out in front of him is making his heart speed up. “I thought he was your kid.”

“Mine?” Miss Hawkeye says.

“And Edward,” Roy says, then makes the mistake of looking over at Miss Hawkeye, who is definitely laughing now. He blushes, turning back to the notes. “I didn’t know he was Edward’s _brother._ How could I know that?”

“I suppose you couldn’t,” Miss Hawkeye says, but he can still hear the laugh in her voice and it makes him blush harder.

He doesn’t know why he’s blushing. It wasn’t a stupid assumption. None of this alchemy stuff makes _sense_ so it’s not like he could base any assumptions off of it!

“I’m sorry,” Miss Hawkeye says, and she puts a hand on his, smoothing out his fingers from where they’re crumpling his shirt. He hadn’t realized he was doing that. “I just wasn’t expecting that. Edward is — well, he’s engaged to someone else.”

“Really?” Roy looks up at her, squinting. Why anyone would agree to marry that obnoxious man was beyond his capacity to understand, apparently.

“Yes,” she says, taking her hand back. “How old did you think I was? Or Edward, for that matter?”

Roy studies her face, looking for a clue. All adults looked the same age, more or less. He could tell she was too old to be a floor girl, but that was about all. She had told him yesterday, sort of, but he can’t remember exactly what she said. He had no idea how old Edward was.

“Thirty? Twenty?” he guesses, and Miss Hawkeye shakes her head.

“Okay, point taken,” she says, though Roy has no idea what point that is.

Before he can ask, she’s pointing to the different papers and explaining, as best as she can, what happened. Most of the explanation goes over his head, but he can pick up the gist. Alphonse had been working on combining alchemy with something called alkahestry, which was more tied to the human body, or life force, than alchemy. He seemed to be doing something with this life force. But something went wrong somewhere, and it ended up turning them both into little kids.

“This is the circle that Alphonse drew,” Miss Hawkeye says, handing him a piece of paper. “It’s still on the floor, but you can see it better this way. Edward says it’s definitely alchemy and alkahestry together, but he doesn’t know what kinds of transmutation circles or arrays Alphonse used, so we’re searching his notes and books for anything that looks similar.”

“Does my older self have notes, too?” Roy asks, suddenly curious about his own note taking methods. And handwriting. How would he organize information? Would he put it in code? He had heard that alchemists usually coded their research, though apparently Alphonse hadn’t…

“Ah, no,” Miss Hawkeye says, and her voice sounds a little funny but Roy is too busy flipping through notes to look up and see why. “I don’t know how much you even knew about all of this.”

“Was it secret?” Roy asks, putting a finger on a sketch of a transmutation circle and glancing at the drawing again. No, no similarities.

“I can’t say for sure, but I think so,” Miss Hawkeye says, and he sees her open a book in his periphery. “Edward didn’t know what Alphonse was doing, which is strange. They have been doing a lot of alchemy research together, so leaving out something like this seems intentional.”

“Maybe Alphonse just wanted to get it right before he told Edward.”

“Alphonse isn’t really like that.”

“If he figured it out, though, he would have the credit,” Roy says, because he doesn’t think Miss Hawkeye understands what he’s trying to say.

“He doesn’t care about that.”

“But if Edward helped, or my older — if _I_ helped, our names would be in the research. Everyone would think we all did the same amount of work,” Roy says, starting to get frustrated.

Miss Hawkeye doesn’t say anything, and when Roy looks up to make sure she isn’t ignoring him, he finds her staring at him.

“What?” he says defensively.

“Does it really matter if people think that?” she asks.

“Of course it does!” Roy says, incredulous. “They should know the truth! If I discovered something, especially something like _this_ which seems — I don’t know, it seems pretty important? If I discovered this, people should know I discovered it!”

“They would know,” Miss Hawkeye points out. “Your name would still be on it.”

“But it’s not the _same!”_

“Why not?”

“Because — because — it’s just not!” he shouts.

“Because it’s not the whole truth?” she says, and her eyes are so intense on his that he can barely hold her gaze even though he _wants_ to. He doesn’t want to look away, because she’s a grown-up and she’s actually arguing with him instead of nodding and patting him on the head and telling him he’s smart without actually saying anything.

“I guess!” he says, because he doesn’t really know for sure but he’s angry.

“Okay,” she says, nodding once. “That’s a good point.”

“You made the point,” he says, irrationally annoyed and folding his arms.

“You cared about it,” she says with a shrug. “Sometimes you need to argue to figure out what you think. Or don’t think.”

She turns back to the notes, but it doesn’t feel like a dismissal. His anger dissipates over the next few minutes as he keeps looking at transmutation circles and comparing them. He keeps getting distracted by the notes, even though he doesn’t know what they mean. Something about the information is alluring to him, even without any context.

A thought occurs to him, and he asks the question immediately, as he usually does.

“Do you argue a lot with — me?”

“Hmm,” she says, not lifting her head from the notes. “Not very much anymore, but we used to argue a lot.”

He thought he remembered her saying she had worked him for eight years, which seems like an unimaginable length of time to know someone. He hasn’t known _anyone_ that long.

“What did we argue about?”

“Lots of things.”

“Like what to eat?”

“Sometimes.”

“Like what I asked you to do?”

“Many times, yes.”

“You didn’t like working for me, then.”

“I — no, I did,” she says, quickly and then slowly. Her words run into each other, and then stretch out like she’s trying to find what to say next. “I just didn’t agree with everything you said. And you didn’t agree with the way I did things sometimes.”

“So we didn’t really get along,” he surmises, and the thought disappoints him for reasons he doesn’t understand.

“No, that’s not…” she says again, but then pauses. “We got along, in our own way.”

“We argued, and didn’t agree with the way each other did things,” Roy says, parroting her words and looking at her with narrowed eyes. “That doesn’t sound like getting along.”

She doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t look up from her notes. Her face is impassive, as it seems to be most of the time.

“It’s okay, you know,” he says after a second. “I’m not a little kid. You don’t have to pretend we were friends or anything. I know you aren’t friends with everyone you work with.”

He’d seen enough fights between the floor girls to know _that,_ at least.

“Right,” she says, but her voice sounds weird again, and she grips her pen tighter.

Roy just stares at her for a moment longer, unsure, before looking back to the notes.

* * *

“Where do you sleep?” Roy asks a few days later, when he wakes up early and finds Miss Hawkeye already in the basement.

He knows that Edward and Alphonse share a bed, because he’s seen Edward tip-toeing into the room next to his, where Alphonse goes to bed after dinner. And Alphonse wakes up sometimes crying for Edward when they’re still working in the basement.

But an afternoon of interminable hide-and-seek with Alphonse made him realize that there aren’t that many rooms in the house. No more bedrooms, anyway. And he’s never seen Miss Hawkeye sleep anywhere.

Miss Hawkeye startles at the sound of his voice and looks up from the workbench. He realizes all at once that she looks exhausted. He hadn’t noticed before, but now that he’s looking for it, he can see it. Her shoulders are slumped, and the skin under her eyes is dark and looks like a bruise.

“Good morning,” she says softly, and her voice sounds like —

Flashes of his mother’s face, yawning and beckoning him into the room in the star-glazed night. “ _Come on in, baby. Another nightmare?”_

Miss Hawkeye’s voice sounds soft and sleepy like that, and it makes him want to cry a little, which is embarrassing.

“Are you alright?” she asks, frowning a little. “Did you have a bad dream?”

“No,” he says defiantly, shaking off the weird feeling and swallowing. “Are you ignoring my question?”

“Why are you concerned all of a sudden?” she asks, patting the bench next to her and turning back to her notes.

“Because you’re always looking at these notes,” he says, walking over and climbing up onto the bench next to her. “You need to sleep sometime.”

“I do sleep,” she says, but she yawns then. That makes Roy look at her skeptically.

“Are you this bossy all the time?” she asks, poking him in the shoulder. But she’s smiling a little, so he knows she’s teasing.

“The floor girls say I’m too assertive,” he says, poking her shoulder right back and unable to stop a grin.

“Who are they?” Miss Hawkeye asks, chuckling and ruffling his hair. “All your little girlfriends?”

“No,” he laughs, squirming out from under her touch, even though it feels nice. His aunt always ruffles his hair too. “They work at the bar, with my aunt.”

“Oh, I see,” Miss Hawkeye says, sounding impressed. It makes Roy want to lift his chin a little higher, even though he thinks she is probably faking it. “And how often did your parents let you go visit your aunt’s bar, hmm? That sounds awfully grown up.”

“I live there,” he says, and he grins a little when he adds, “and I’m very grown up.”

Her eyebrows are a little scrunched, but she’s still smiling.

“You live at the bar?”

“That’s where my aunt lives, so yes,” Roy says, rolling his eyes. “Obviously.”

“Oh,” she says, and a funny look passes over her face for a second before she pokes him in the forehead and distracts him. “How long have you lived there, being all sophisticated?”

“A couple years, I guess,” he says, scrunching his face and trying to remember exactly. “I’ve had three teachers in school.”

“You’re practically an adult now,” she says, and even though Roy knows she’s teasing, his belly is still warm as he sits next to her and pulls a piece of note paper toward himself.

He goes through ten sheets of notes before he realizes that she never answered his question.

* * *

Roy finds the answer to his question the next morning when he wakes up early again and walks quietly downstairs. The house is eerily silent in the pre-dawn light, and he pokes his head into the living room to see the couch empty, as he had sort of suspected it would be. He opens the basement door as noiselessly as he can and tip-toes down the steps to see Miss Hawkeye sitting slumped at the workbench, her head resting on her arms. Her eyes are closed, and her breathing is deep and even.

He walks up to her and squints his eyes, considering what to do. Finding an adult sleeping where they shouldn’t be is oddly thrilling and uncomfortable in equal measure.

She needs to sleep in a better place, if she’s going to do anything useful for anyone. He’s seen the floor girls after too many late nights, and he knows things will only get worse from here.

He also knows the only bed left in the house is the one he’s been sleeping on, and he has a feeling that she will insist that he keep it.

He puts an experimental hand on her shoulder, but she doesn’t move.

“Miss Hawkeye,” he whispers, squeezing a little.

She jolts awake, which startles him into stumbling backwards.

“What — Roy?” she says, sounding confused as she blinks around the basement and then looks at him. “Oh, sorry. I fell asleep.”

“You should sleep in a bed,” he informs her, crossing his arms in front of him.

“I’m fine,” she says, rubbing her eyes.

“You’re not,” he says. “You’re tired.”

“I’m alright, Roy,” she says, and her voice is tired and soft.

“I know there’s not another bed,” he says, and she looks sharply at him. “I can sleep on the couch, you know. I’m small.”

“You won’t sleep as well,” she says. “There are too many windows in that room. That’s why I don’t sleep there. I’m not too big for a couch, _you know.”_

She’s teasing him, but he ignores it, unwilling to be distracted.

“You can sleep upstairs right now. I’m awake anyway.”

She looks a little funny at that, but he just narrows his eyes at her.

“You need to sleep better, or you won’t find anything useful,” he says.

She sighs, and there’s a bit of a smile on her face.

“You sound just like — you.”

“I _am_ me,” he says, miffed, and she chuckles.

“Never mind. Alright, little tyrant. I’ll go take a nap.”

“Good,” he says, pushing her off the bench as she starts moving. “I’m sure Edward can make breakfast.”

“I’m sure he can’t,” Miss Hawkeye says, but she doesn’t sound very bothered by that.

“I can, if he can’t,” Roy says, rolling his eyes. “Are you sure he’s engaged? He can’t even make breakfast?”

“He does have other redeeming qualities,” she says as she yawns again and walks toward the stairs.

“Not that I can see,” Roy mutters, disbelieving. Sometimes Miss Hawkeye was _too_ nice.

She sleeps almost until lunch, and though Ed complains about it, he does manage to make breakfast. Miss Hawkeye comes downstairs to Roy at the stove making soup with leftover sausage from breakfast and some vegetables he found in the pantry.

“I didn’t know you could cook,” she says, ruffling his hair and yawning.

“I can make soup,” he says, trying not to sound proud of himself and failing.

She smiles.

“Soup is great,” she says. “I can finish up if you want to do something else.”

Roy doesn’t feel particularly excited about looking through notes that haven’t given any indication of being helpful, but he doesn’t really want to keep making soup in an empty kitchen either. So he hesitates, stirring the pot that he can barely see the top of.

“Or I could help you,” she says after a moment. “I make a pretty good soup, myself.”

“Sure,” he says, hiding his relief as he hands her the spoon and goes back to stripping the herbs he had found on the windowsill. “Did you get some sleep?”

“Yes,” she says. “Thank you.”

“I can sleep on the couch,” he says again, and he can hear her blow out a puff of air, though he’s not sure if that means she’s laughing or annoyed.

“We already talked about this. The windows face east, so the sun—“

“I can sleep on the floor in Edward and Alphonse’s room, then,” he says. “It’s dark in there.”

She’s quiet, which he hopes means that she’s considering it.

The fragrance of herbs wafts through the kitchen as he carefully pulls the leaves from their stems and lines them up to chop when he’s done. The cook at the bar doesn’t use herbs; she says they’re too fussy. But Roy knows they aren’t, really. And they smell like home.

“Alright,” she says after a few minutes. “But I’m making you a pallet to sleep on.”

“Okay,” he says with a shrug.

By the time they finish making the soup, Edward is stomping into the house and declaring he’s starving and Alphonse is chattering about how Edward is the best horse he’s ever seen. Miss Hawkeye just laughs at both of them and ladles everyone a big bowl of soup, saying that Roy made it.

She still looks tired, but less so. And even tired, Roy thinks she’s prettier than most of the floor girls. And, remembering how they pinched his arm and cuffed his ears, _much_ nicer.

* * *

“I found something!” Miss Hawkeye says abruptly, sitting straight up and grabbing the paper in front of her. “These runes are the same! I’m sure of it.”

Over the past week or so, Roy has slowly been coming to understand what he’s reading. He isn’t sure exactly how it happened, since there were no “basics of alchemy” books and Edward isn’t exactly the most patient person when it comes to explanations, but things just started clicking in his mind. Patterns he didn’t consciously notice had started coming to mind, and the shapes of runes wrapped around his dreams and thoughts like they had always been there.

So when he looks at the paper Miss Hawkeye is holding, watches where her finger brushes and compares it to the drawing, he feels a shiver up his spine. She’s right. They are the same. They’re drawn differently, but the slight discrepancies don’t matter. No two people write runes the same way — it’s like handwriting, but trickier. There’s a certain margin you have to stay within, or they don’t work. But there’s no actual explanation for the margin; Roy just _knows_ when he looks at it that they’re the same.

“What do they mean?” he asks eagerly, looking between the two papers with excitement.

“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “I need to get Edward. He would know.”

Roy has found out over the course of his time helping that Edward _used_ to be an alchemist, but he can’t do alchemy anymore. Miss Hawkeye said he doesn’t want to talk about it, and Roy doesn’t dare ask. But despite that, Edward seems to know about as much about alchemy as anyone could.

He came downstairs less than a minute after Miss Hawkeye went up, yelling at her about the best ways to be a knight for Alphonse in his current favorite game.

“Okay, you better be right,” he says, sitting at the bench.

Roy shoves the paper at him and points to the runes.

“These ones,” he says excitedly. “They’re the same as these ones, right?”

He points at the drawing of the transmutation circle and waits, impatiently, as Edward looks at both papers at least a dozen times.

“They are,” he says finally, when Roy feels like he’s going to explode with impatience.

“Yes!” he crows. “What do they mean? What does that mean for the transmutation circle? What does it do?”

“Alright, alright,” Edward says, pushing Roy backward several inches. “Just because we know what a few runes mean doesn’t mean we know what the whole circle does. You’re an impatient little squirt; d’you know that?”

“But what do they _mean?”_ Roy says, undeterred by Edward’s grumpy attitude for once.

“They have to do with life force, natural rhythms, uh…” Edward raises one eyebrow and looks up at the ceiling as he snaps his fingers. “Natural rhythms like … hm. Sunrise and sunset. Things that aren’t determined by humans.”

“Okay,” Roy says slowly. “So something about these rhythms is in the circle. And it has to do with life force?”

“Yeah,” Edward mutters, and his eyes are scanning rapidly through the rest of the sheet. Roy scoots closer, reading over his shoulder. Ordinarily, Edward would shove him away, but he doesn’t seem to notice. They read silently together.

_“The use of alkahestry to regulate illness in this way can reset the chi from any tampering it might have undergone due to foreign influence. Alchemy, injury, poison, or extreme illness can all offset the balance of chi in the body, causing multifaceted issues…”_

Roy feels like he only really comprehends every third word, and he’s not exactly sure what he’s reading, but Edward doesn’t say anything for a long time. He’s on his third reading before the man sits straight up, knocking into Roy’s shoulder.

“They were trying to siphon life force using a natural rhythm,” he says quietly, but there’s an urgency in his voice. “The life force was supposed to come out in specific increments.”

“But what—“

“—increments, I don’t know,” Edward says, finishing and answering his question in one breath. His eyes are distant. “That was probably the issue. Alphonse thought it was one natural rhythm, probably a small one, and it was a larger one than he thought. Let’s see if we can find any numbers in this transmutation circle.”

“What are the numbers?” Roy asks eagerly.

“What? Oh, yeah,” Edward says, the almost trance-like focus falling away. “I forgot you don’t know this stuff anymore.”

For a moment, Roy feels off-balance, but he’s not sure why. But then Edward is drawing out the runes for numbers and explaining how to combine the basic runes to make larger numbers, and the feeling disappears. He and Edward search the transmutation circle for any indication of numbers, but don’t find any. Edward doesn’t seem bothered, though.

“It was a slim chance,” he says with a shrug. “Stuff like numbers is usually more in your intent than anything else. But this is at least a good indication of what went wrong. It …”

He trails off, and Roy studies his face, waiting. Edward is the least grumpy when he talks about alchemy, and his face looks almost pleasant, now. The pinched look he had on his face from frowning and complaining usually only disappeared when he was around Al, so it’s weird to see him like this now.

“We need May Chang,” Edward says, standing up. “I think she can help us fix this. Or, if not fix it, at least…”

He trails off again, muttering as he practically runs for the door.

“At least what?” Roy shouts, starting to run after him, but Edward is already at the top of the stairs before he reaches the bottom.

Roy blows out a puff of air that ruffles his hair before turning back to the work bench. Whatever.

* * *

Edward runs into town to send a telegram to this May Chang, and gets an immediate response from her family, saying that she had already left and should be there soon.

The Xingese woman arrives on the first train the next morning.

“I told Alphonse not to mess with alkahestry arrays without telling me!” she says, incensed as she stomps down the stairs to the basement. “He promised he wouldn’t!”

“Miss Chang?” Roy says, scrambling to his knees on the bench so he’s a little taller and can see better. “I thought you wouldn’t be here for another week!”

“I started the journey as soon as Riza told me what happened!” she shouts, then blinks and seems to realize that she’s talking to someone other than Edward, who had been trailing her down the stairs. “Colonel?”

“He doesn’t remember that he’s a colonel, er, general now, I guess,” Edward supplies, and glares right back at her when she turns her evil look onto him. “What? He doesn’t!”

“You know me,” Roy surmises, and Miss Chang looks back at him, studying him for a moment before nodding.

“Yes. Your older self.”

“Obviously,” Roy says impatiently. “You’re here to help, then.”

“Yes,” she says again, much more subdued than she had been when talking to Edward.

“I’ll just go get… Hawkeye…” Edward says, edging for the door.

Miss Chang glares at him again, and he runs up the stairs.

“You guys don’t get along?” Roy guesses.

“No, we get along fine,” May says, looking completely nonplussed. “I like Alphonse better, though. Where are the runes he was talking about?”

“Here,” Roy says, thinking better of pressing her for a more complete explanation when he hears measured footsteps that must mean Miss Hawkeye.

She had spent the majority of that day and the day before with Alphonse while Edward puzzled through the notes around the runes they had found, and it’s nice to see her back in the basement. He can’t help a bit of a smile that he quickly hides by ducking his head and looking at the notes in front of him.

“Did you find anything else?” she asks him quietly as she slips onto the bench next to him.

Miss Chang is studying the notes, muttering and shaking her head and sighing Alphonse’s name periodically.

“No,” he says, shaking his head without looking at her. “I found a few circles and arrays that _might_ be connected, but Edward said we couldn’t be sure until Miss Chang got here.”

“Mm,” she says, nodding. “Which ones?”

He shows her, because they have nothing better to do while they wait. Her eyes are bright, flickering between the pages and nodding as he points to the things that might be similar. She looks much less tired after several days of sleeping in a real bed, and Roy feels a little bad that he hadn’t noticed how tired she had been sooner. But, he reminds himself, she _is_ an adult. She doesn’t need him to look out for her.

Except maybe she does, because otherwise she would probably still be sleeping in the basement.

That thought is confusing, so he drops it and looks back at Miss Chang.

“So?” he says when his patience is so far gone that he can’t resist. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know what he was thinking,” Miss Chang says, shaking her head. “I can’t decipher which exact circles and arrays he used as a model, but I think I have a general idea of what he was trying to do.”

“I found some others that might be similar,” Roy says, perking up. “If that would help.”

“Unless I can be absolutely sure, not really,” she says, which makes Roy deflate, and flares up irritation in his chest. Miss Hawkeye’s shoulder presses into him for a second, probably by accident, but it distracts him enough that the irritation is gone when he refocuses on what Miss Chang is saying.

“I can’t reverse it unless I know exactly what he did,” Miss Chang continues. “It’s strange that Alphonse didn’t leave any exact notes.”

“Edward said the same thing,” Miss Hawkeye says, shaking her head. “It’s not like him.”

“No, it’s not,” Miss Chang says, and her voice sounds grave enough to raise the hairs on the back of Roy’s neck. “I think there must be something very bad going on. But there’s no way of knowing until we can get both of them back.”

“But if we don’t know exactly what they did,” Miss Hawkeye says slowly, “then…”

“I can’t reverse it,” Miss Chang says, shaking her head. “But I might… I might be able to do something else.”

She looks at Roy suddenly. He meets her gaze, unblinking.

“Where are those other circles and arrays?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who is reading and leaving kudos! <3 I hope you are enjoying so far. And thank you to lantur and dragonifyoudare for your kind comments on the last chapter. Comments are always appreciated. :) See you on Thursday!


	3. Part 1 - Chapter 3

The next few days, Miss Chang asks to be left alone in the basement. Without his normal routine of waking up, looking through notes, eating food, and going to sleep, Roy feels a little adrift. But Miss Hawkeye looks a little out of sorts, too, and it only takes a couple of hours of idle hands before she’s found a picnic basket in the coat closet and is declaring that they’re going to picnic somewhere and make a day of it.

“You know the area, Edward,” she instructs, loading up the picnic basket. “You choose where we go.”

She fills the basket with sandwiches and all manner of food that had been left on their doorstep that morning by the grocer. Apparently the grocer delivered food several times a week, which Roy thought was the best thing he had ever heard of. Food on his doorstep without having to shop for it? Genius.

“Picnic!” Alphonse declares jubilantly, running up to Roy and yanking on his sleeve. “You play with me today?”

“Sure,” Roy sighs. “What are we playing?”

“Knights and Alchemists!”

“How do you play —“

“I’m a alchemist, and you the knight,” Alphonse says excitedly. “We work together to save the dazzle!”

“What’s a dazzle?” Roy asks, knowing that he probably shouldn’t.

“Someone in stress,” Alphonse informs him. “Stress is bad. You have to save the dazzle in stress.”

“Okay,” Roy says, shrugging.

He can hear Miss Hawkeye laughing while trying to sound like she isn’t, and he gives her a look over his shoulder. She pretends not to see it, but Roy knows from the sparkle in her eyes that she does.

Edward leads them over several hills, the sun blazing down at them from an azure sky. Roy has spent the majority of his time in Resembool in the basement, so he hadn’t really noticed how … _big_ it was, outside. He’s grown up in the city, and seeing so much sky unbroken by buildings is both exciting and a little unsettling.

He finds himself walking close to Miss Hawkeye, bumping into her when he gets distracted by something he’s looking at. A huge tree, almost as tall as a building? A fence stretching to the horizon? Several cows?

After running into her twice and stepping on her feet at least once, she shifts the picnic basket to her other arm and lets her left hand dangle empty at her side. She glances at him for a moment, too quickly for Roy to say anything even if he had something to say, then looks forward. A dusty old instinct in his chest wants to reach for her hand. But the part of him that reminds himself that he isn’t a little kid wants to pull away. He’s not a baby. He doesn’t need to hold anyone’s hand.

But he watches with a strange ache as Edward slings Alphonse up onto his shoulders, both of them laughing when Alphonse shouts at his horse to hurry up. His aunt isn’t like that. Neither are the floor girls. His dad used to be, though. He can’t remember perfectly, but he knows — the swoop of being thrown into the air. The sound of his laugh.

When he bumps into Miss Hawkeye again, he takes her hand. He’s not a baby. But she doesn’t treat him like one, either, so she knows that.

Besides, she just doesn’t want him to run into her anymore. So, really, he’s doing her a favor.

The rest of the walk, he silently notes all the huge and interesting things that make up the countryside. Sweeping hills and fields, wandering livestock, patches of trees that seem to have sprung up out of nowhere. Edward is laughing with Alphonse, looking much less angry and grumpy than he usually does when Roy sees him. Miss Hawkeye’s hand keeps him walking steadily, gripping a little tighter when he stumbles on something and gently keeping him from running into her.

It’s… nice. It’s all just very nice, in a way that makes his chest feel like a balloon.

Miss Hawkeye lets go of his hand when Edward yells that they’re in the best picnic place. She tells Roy to go play with Al and Edward while she sets up the picnic.

“I can help,” he says, because helping her doesn’t sound like much fun, but playing with the others sounds worse.

“Is it Edward?” she asks, raising her eyebrows. “I know he can be a little … intense?”

“He always yells at me,” Roy says, crossing his arms. “He says I’m being mean to Alphonse. But I’m _not.”_

“He only yells because he loves Alphonse a lot, and he’s worried,” Miss Hawkeye says, opening the basket. “He’s not really yelling at you.”

“He says I’m annoying.”

“He thinks everyone is annoying,” Miss Hawkeye counters. “But he’s not bad if you give him a chance.”

Roy eyes her dubiously, and she looks up from the basket and chuckles at his face.

“I told him to be nice,” she admits. “Alphonse misses playing with you.”

“Five minutes,” he relents, and she smiles a little before putting on a fake serious face.

“Shake on it.”

She holds out her hand, and Roy rolls his eyes but shakes it.

“Ed!” Miss Hawkeye calls over his shoulder as Roy walks toward the two of them. “I bet you can’t carry both of them at the same time!”

“ _What?!_ ” Edward shouts back, and for the first time, his angry face makes Roy want to laugh instead of back away. “ _Of course I can!_ ”

He already has Alphonse on his shoulders, but he comes running for Roy as Alphonse screams in delight. Roy tries to turn and run, but he can’t evade the man’s longer legs for long. The next moment, all three of them are tumbling down the hill, laughing and trying to get to their feet. At the bottom, Alphonse and Roy manage to pin Edward down. Alphonse is laughing too hard to keep him down for long, though, and soon Edward sweeps them both under his arms and stomps up the hill again, crowing for Miss Hawkeye to see that he has them both.

Roy isn’t entirely sure how it happens, but one thing leads to another, and he doesn’t realize how long he’s been running around with Edward and Alphonse until a flash of white in the corner of his eye catches his attention. It’s Miss Hawkeye, sitting cross-legged on the picnic blanket she’s spread out on the grass, and she has an unwieldy sheet of paper in her hands that she’s in the process of unfolding. It looks a bit like the city maps he’s seen tourists holding in front of them in Central as they walk blindly through the streets. But this paper looks like it has a different shape traced onto it in thin black lines — not a nest of city streets, but some kind of diagram.

She’s studying it, frowning and tapping different parts of it. Her mouth is moving, like she’s talking to herself, and it’s only when she glances up that he realizes he’s been staring at her. She looks startled to see his eyes fixed on her, and Roy feels heat in his cheeks.

“Roy!” Alphonse calls, cresting the hill behind him and running at full-tilt. “Run run run!”

Roy seizes onto the simple idea with enthusiasm, joining Alphonse a few steps behind, but soon outstripping his short legs.

It’s not too much longer before Miss Hawkeye is calling for them to come eat. The paper is folded up again; he can see it just barely sticking out of her pocket. He considers asking what it is, but is saved the trouble by Edward.

“Were you looking at specs?” he asks, stacking two sandwiches on top of each other and cramming a huge bite in his mouth.

“Yes,” she says. “A new model, just out. It’s supposed to have better accuracy, but I’m not sure. It doesn’t look much different from the ’13 on paper. I’ll need to test it out.”

“Too bad you don’t have it already,” Edward says with his mouth full. “No better place to fire a gun than in the middle of nowhere.”

He gestures widely around them at the expanse of … largely nothing. Roy thinks he has a point. Miss Hawkeye looks a little amused, too, but just shakes her head as she starts in on her own sandwich.

Roy hadn’t known that Miss Hawkeye shot guns. He can’t remember seeing any at the house, though he supposes people don’t just _leave guns laying around._ He thinks he should be more surprised by this information, but he isn’t. She looks like she would be good with a gun.

He shakes his head. What does that even _mean?_

They all eat the sandwiches and vegetables and fruit from the basket in relative silence after that. Edward complains when Miss Hawkeye tries to get him to drink some of the milk she brought along, but Alphonse happily drinks his portion. By the time lunch is over, Roy is feeling comfortably sleepy. Warm sun and a full belly make him yawn, even as Alphonse dashes away from the blanket, calling for Edward to come chase him.

“Tired?” Miss Hawkeye asks.

Her voice is the kind of voice that blends right into the scenery of a sunny picnic like it’s always belonged there, and Roy thinks it’s probably one of the nicest voices there is.

“I just want to sit here for a bit,” he says in response, settling into the blanket.

“Do you ever find shapes in the clouds?” Miss Hawkeye asks, and she lays down on the blanket next to him, her warm eyes fixed on the sky.

“Sometimes,” he says, because he thinks he’s done it once or twice.

It seemed a little babyish to him, but Miss Hawkeye is searching the clouds very seriously, so he lays down too and looks up.

Laying down makes him sleepier, and he has to stifle a yawn as he looks for recognizable things in the puffy white shapes.

“Horse,” Miss Hawkeye says quietly, pointing.

He follows her finger and squints at the cloud.

“It has five legs,” he says.

“That’s just a really long tail,” she explains.

“Hm.”

They’re quiet for another minute before Roy points.

“Dragon.”

“Is it breathing fire?”

“Yes.”

“I see it.”

Her voice is serious, which makes him smile a little. They go back and forth like this for several minutes before Roy’s eyes start to close.

“Roy?”

“Hm?”

“I’m sorry, about your parents,” she says, and that surprises him enough that he opens his eyes.

“What?”

“I knew your parents weren’t around when I first met you,” she says, slowly, like she’s trying to figure out how exactly to untangle the past from the present from the strange alchemical mess. “But I didn’t realize — I didn’t know how young you had been, when you lost them. You _are_ very brave, you know.”

The floor girls had told him he was brave a lot when he first came to the bar. Probably because he didn’t cry where anyone could see him, and he didn’t throw tantrums or yell. He didn’t know how to tell them that he wasn’t brave at all, so he didn’t. He just let them keep saying it until they forgot and stopped.

“I know that probably sounds like I don’t mean it,” Miss Hawkeye continues, and something about her words sounds like a twisted-up laugh. “I do, though. My parents died when I was young, too. I didn’t feel brave at all, but I know I was. I didn’t have much of a choice; I don’t think you do either. But that doesn’t keep it from being true.”

“How did they die?” Roy asks, because the question flies into his brain and out of his mouth before he can think to stop it. It’s rude, incredibly rude, and probably mean, too.

But he’s curious, and he can’t bring himself to take it back.

“Sickness,” she says simply. “My mother when I was very, very young. I can’t remember her at all. Father didn’t keep any pictures, so I don’t have anything to remember her by, really. Father died when I was older. Eighteen.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s been a long time ago, now,” she says, and he hears a shift like she’s shrugging. “But thank you, Roy.”

“Mine died in a car accident,” Roy says before he can lose his nerve. He swallows past the lump in his throat, but he knows it’s only fair. “On their way back from a party.”

“At the same time,” she says.

Her voice is sad, but it doesn’t feel like the pity from the floor girls because he knows she has felt like this too. She is filled with a sadness that is halfway his and halfway hers, and for some reason that makes it all a lot more bearable.

“They don’t know who did it,” he says, his voice a little stronger. “I heard Madam Christmas talking with the police. The other car drove away.”

He thinks of something and turns to her, asking immediately.

“Do you know anything about it? Did they catch the other driver?”

She turns her head to face him, looking contemplative.

“I don’t know anything about it,” she says, and he deflates a little.

He had been hoping, maybe, for a fraction of a moment, that he had figured out what happened to his parents and brought the person responsible to justice.

“You never told me any of this,” she continues. “You are very private, though. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more.”

His mouth twists in disappointment, but he faces the sky once more. A shift against the fabric of the blanket tells him she’s looked up again, too.

Miss Hawkeye has known his older self for practically forever. Eight years? And she didn’t know about his parents. Didn’t know about the accident. Roy doesn’t understand how he could know someone that long without blurting it all out. He’s only known _this_ Miss Hawkeye for a week, and he’s already told her everything.

He must really change when he gets older, he thinks. _Private,_ she had called him. The word feels strange even in his mind.

He yawns, the tiredness catching up to him once more as he gazes up at the clouds. But the thoughts and feelings knot around each other as he does, until he’s talking again.

“Miss Hawkeye?”

“Hm?”

“I’m sorry we aren’t friends,” he says, sleepiness blurring his voice. “My older self, I mean.”

“That’s — it’s alright,” she says, then pauses before continuing. “Why do you think we aren’t friends?”

“I told you I’m not a baby,” Roy says, rubbing his eyes. “I know we don’t get along.”

She doesn’t say anything, and Roy keeps talking, feeling the warmth of the sun on his closed eyelids.

“You’re just … really nice. I’m not very nice, which is probably why we aren’t friends.”

“Who told you you weren’t nice?” Miss Hawkeye says, and she sounds a bit like she’s going to scold him, so he opens his eyes and sits up. Her face is impassive, like it usually is.

“Floor girls, mostly,” he says, shrugging.

“Can I tell you something?” she asks.

“Yes?”

She sits up too and looks over at him, very serious, and a little sad, which he doesn’t understand.

“I’m not very nice to your older self.”

“Is that why we aren’t friends?” Roy asks, wrinkling his nose at the thought. He can’t imagine anyone not wanting to be friends with Miss Hawkeye. Even Edward likes her, and he’s insufferable.

“I wouldn’t say — I don’t know,” she says, biting her lip.

“I don’t think it’s you,” Roy says reassuringly. “It’s definitely me. You’re mostly nice, even if you say you’re a little not-nice sometimes. I’m all not-nice, all the time.”

“That’s not true,” she says softly. “You know that’s not true, don’t you?”

Roy isn’t sure what to say to that, and Miss Hawkeye looks even sadder.

“Roy,” she says, reaching out and brushing hair away from his face. “You’re nice when it matters. When people really need you to be. That’s more important than being nice all the time. When _you’re_ nice, people know you aren’t faking it.”

“It would be better if I was nice all the time, though,” Roy says, because he can’t help it.

“Nobody is nice all the time,” she says, smiling a little even though she still looks sad.

“Is that why you aren’t nice to my older self? Because you know I can take it?” Roy asks, grinning at her and hoping that a joke will make her less sad. It usually worked on the floor girls and Madame Christmas.

Miss Hawkeye laughs, ruffling his hair.

“You’re very strong, Roy,” Miss Hawkeye says. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Yes,” he says, lifting his chin and doing his best to look like the fancy rich men that came into the bar sometimes. “I’m the strongest alchemist around, I bet.”

“You certainly are,” she says, but her voice sounds a little sad again.

Before he can try to dig deeper into that line of questioning, she surprises him by leaning over and kissing the top of his head before standing up.

“Come on,” she says, holding out a hand. “We’d better find Edward and Alphonse before they run to the next town over.”

Roy could swear that his head is tingling a little, probably with surprise that Miss Hawkeye would still be so nice to him even when he’s not very nice most of the time. But he takes her hand and lets her pull him to his feet, and the two of them start walking in the last direction they had seen Edward and Alphonse.

* * *

“Roy,” a voice whispers, close to his ear.

Roy wakes up at once, sitting bolt upright on his pallet on the floor of Edward’s room. Edward and Alphonse are still asleep on the bed; he can see them in the dim moonlight trickling between the curtains. Alphonse is sprawled out, arms and legs everywhere and taking up half the bed even though he’s practically a baby. Edward is laying on his side, his arm wrapped around Alphonse’s chest.

Edward always wears shirtsleeves during the day, but at night Roy had seen the scars on his right shoulder. He hadn’t asked what they were from, but they looked deep and frightening. He wondered if they were from alchemy. If they were the reason he didn’t do alchemy anymore. He wondered if alchemy was why he had an automail leg, too.

And then he wondered if alchemy was such a good thing, if it could do terrible things like that.

“Don’t wake up the others yet,” the whisper says, and he recognizes Miss Hawkeye’s voice. “Come downstairs.”

He moves silently in the darkness, following the dark shadow into the unlit hallway and down the stairs. The basement is the only place with lights turned on, and Roy can see the harsh electric glow spilling out of the open doorway as they approach it. He has to squint against the brightening light as they go down the stairs, lifting a hand to shield his eyes while they adjust.

Miss Chang is on the ground, using a piece of chalk to do something to the circle on the ground.

“Ah — hello,” she says, looking up at the two of them as they enter. “Where’s Alphonse?”

“I’m sure that’s going to be a longer discussion,” Miss Hawkeye says, and something about her voice makes Roy crane his neck up to see her face better. “I thought you might be more successful at it, once you finish.”

He doesn’t know why he bothered looking. Miss Hawkeye’s face is unreadable.

“You’re probably right,” Miss Chang says, standing up and putting the chalk carefully on a workbench before dusting off her hands. “I just drew the last line, so that should be all we need.”

“Excellent,” Miss Hawkeye says, but it doesn’t sound very excellent. She sounds distracted.

Roy waits for Miss Chang’s footsteps to fade away on the stairs before he turns to Miss Hawkeye.

“What’s going on?” he asks, but she’s turning away from him and grabbing something off one of the workbenches.

“May thinks she’s found a way to make you older again,” Miss Hawkeye says.

When she turns back to him, he can see that she’s holding a small stack of clothes. The clothes he had been wearing what felt like months ago when he had thought he was being kidnapped. His heart pumps faster, but he doesn’t know if it’s excitement or disappointment that makes it do so.

“That’s good, right?” he says, searching her warm eyes. Something is strange. _Something_ is strange, but he doesn’t know what.

“Yes, of course it is,” she says, and she smiles, kneeling in front of him.

She looks a little sad, but sometimes she looks sad and it doesn’t seem to mean anything, so Roy tries to listen to her and believe her. Because she’s not a liar.

“Are you worried?” she asks, brushing hair out of his eyes. “It won’t hurt. You’ll be alright.”

“Will I remember?” he blurts out suddenly, and he blinks because he hadn’t known he was going to ask that question until he was asking it.

“You should remember everything when you’re an adult again, yes,” she says.

“No, I mean — will I remember _this?”_ he asks, and his hands want to grab something, twist, pull. He presses his palms together, feeling his fingertips arch into his knuckles as something prickles in the corners of his eyes. “Will I remember — now?”

“I think so,” Miss Hawkeye says, pressing the palm of her hand to his cheek. It’s cool and dry and _nice._ “Is that why you’re nervous?”

“I don’t want to forget,” he says, though he isn’t sure why. He looks into her eyes, into the warmth and kindness, and feels a tear fall. Then another. They run into the crease between her hand and his cheek, startling and warm in comparison to her touch.

“Sweet boy,” Miss Hawkeye says, so softly it’s almost a breath. “Come here.”

Roy stumbles forward, and Miss Hawkeye’s arms wrap around him. He buries his face in her shoulder, crying tears he can’t comprehend as she smooths down his hair and makes soft noises.

“You’ll be here when I wake up?” he asks, and he doesn’t care if he sounds like a baby right now. “I know we aren’t friends but —“

“I’ll be here,” she says, cutting off the sentence he wasn’t sure how to finish. “But you won’t need me, when you’re a grown up again.”

He wants to say that he will need her, that maybe she should teach him how to be nicer so they can be friends, but he thinks that’s probably stupid so he just hugs her tighter.

She kisses him on the head again, and it should make him feel like a little kid, maybe, but instead it makes him feel stronger. When she pulls her arms back, Roy wipes his face with his sleeve.

“Okay. What do I need to do?”

“There’s my brave boy,” Miss Hawkeye says, and she’s smiling even though Roy is pretty sure she just cried a little too. “Put on your adult clothes and have a seat on that bigger stool.”

She hands him the clothes and points to the center of the circle Miss Chang had just finished.

There are two stools in the middle now, instead of one. The one on the right is bigger, but they both have lines and circles around them, connecting to the bigger circle. Roy can’t see the full circle properly, but parts of it look familiar. He recognizes a few runes, a few line patterns, but he has no idea what any of it means.

He goes to the bathroom upstairs to change, and when he comes back down, he finds Edward in a heated discussion with Miss Hawkeye and Miss Chang. Alphonse is on his hip, arms wrapped around his big brother’s neck as he yawns and blinks sleepily. Roy sees that he’s wearing the large shirt he vaguely remembers from his first day here, his legs and feet bare. Roy is having trouble enough moving around in his clothes; he supposes that little Alphonse couldn’t really wear his older self’s whole outfit. A shirt would be better than nothing.

“I should be the one to—“

“No, Edward,” Miss Hawkeye says, loud enough to cut him off before talking more quietly again.

Roy edges toward them, trying to look like he’s not eavesdropping.

“—lose all your knowledge,” she’s saying. “It wouldn’t make sense.”

“We could just take a few—“

“Over here, Roy,” Miss Chang calls, startling Roy and making both Edward and Miss Hawkeye stop talking.

Roy glowers at her, but she just smiles at him. When she looks past him though, she’s glaring. Probably at Edward.

“Put Alphonse on the stool, please,” she says.

“No! You can’t just decide!” Edward says hotly. “And you don’t even _know_ what will happen to Al!”

His face is drawn, and he’s yelling. But it’s different from his other yelling. His hands are tight on Alphonse, who finally looks like he’s waking up. Edward is looking at Miss Hawkeye, and then at Miss Chang.

He’s worried.

“What’s wrong?” Roy says, looking between the three of them, trying to catch whatever it is they aren’t saying. “What’s going to happen?”

“Enough, Edward,” Miss Hawkeye says sharply, but the hand she puts on his arm is gentle. And when she speaks again, her voice is quiet but firm. “Enough. I know you want to be the hero, but this makes the most sense and you know it. We don’t know for sure about Alphonse, but I think you can agree he would say it’s worth the risk. May has already told you it’s extremely likely—”

“But you’re not _sure!”_

“We can leave Alphonse this age, but there are risks there, too,” Miss Hawkeye says, and her voice is hard but not unkind.

“Were you even listening when I told you that?” Miss Chang snaps. “A week is as long as we can safely push the natural rhythm of his chi in this state. The risk is much higher if he stays four!”

Edward makes a sound like a frustrated growl, burying his face in his free hand.

“Brother?” Alphonse says, his voice small and scared and sleepy.

Edward doesn’t say anything for a moment, just breathes in and out through his fingers. Roy can feel the tension in the air, and it makes him uncomfortable and a little scared. He doesn’t know what’s happening, and he’s beginning to think no one is going to tell him.

“It’s okay, Al,” Edward says, and he doesn’t sound angry anymore. “I’m sorry.”

“What’s wrong?” Roy repeats, stepping closer to Edward and Miss Hawkeye again.

Edward won’t look at him, but Miss Hawkeye does. She bends down, crouching so they’re on the same level, and holds his gaze.

“Remember when May said she couldn’t reverse it without knowing exactly what happened?”

Roy nods, afraid to say anything in case she stops talking.

“We need the two of you to be older, so you can help Edward and May figure out what you did.”

“Why is Edward angry?”

“Because it’s not fixing the whole problem,” Miss Hawkeye says. “Neither of you will be your proper ages, but you’ll be closer.”

“Okay,” Roy says slowly, looking at Edward.

But Edward is walking away, talking quietly to Alphonse before putting him down on the smaller stool.

He knows there’s something they aren’t telling him.

It feels like when Madame Christmas locked the police out of her office and let Roy sit at her desk until he stopped shaking.

_“You don’t need to know everything,”_ she had said, like that answered every problem. Like she always sounded. _“Sometimes it’s better that way.”_

Miss Hawkeye doesn’t say anything else, just waits for him to look back at her, searching her face. He feels like she’s asking him a question without words, but he doesn’t know what that question is, and he doesn’t know the answer either.

Everything feels big and heavy and important, but he doesn’t know why. It’s like looking at a battle through a peephole. There’s too much going on, and he doesn’t know who’s fighting, who’s defending, or what they’re fighting about.

He just has Miss Hawkeye who doesn’t lie, who said he would be alright, who said she would still be here when it was over.

She nods at him, like he’s answered the question she was asking.

“Are you ready to have a seat?” she asks.

It’s his turn to nod.

She smiles again, and her thumb brushes over his cheek, where the tears had been a few minutes earlier. It makes Roy stand up straighter, strong and brave like she said he was.

“Alright,” she says. “Let’s get started, then.”

Miss Chang starts explaining to the two of them how important it is that they stay on the stool, no matter what happens. Roy tries to focus, but his eyes keep pulling to Miss Hawkeye, who is talking to Edward again. Edward is facing away from them, so Roy can’t see his face, and Miss Hawkeye’s face betrays nothing.

“No matter what,” Miss Chang is saying. “Roy?”

“No matter what,” he echoes, looking at her quickly.

“I mean it,” she says firmly. “And if Alphonse tries to move, keep him on the stool.”

“But he won’t,” Edward says from the outside of the circle, smiling broadly at Alphonse, who giggles. “Right, Al?”

“Right, brother!” Alphonse says, giving him a big thumbs-up.

And then Miss Chang is throwing a few little knives, screwing up her face in concentration as she holds one hand in front of her and rests the other gently on the outermost line of the circle on the floor.

It’s only then that Roy realizes Miss Hawkeye is standing in the circle, too. There’s a little space with lines and runes swirling around it, and her feet are in the blank space.

Roy opens his mouth to tell Miss Chang to _wait_ , that there’s some mistake, but then everything goes dark.

* * *

Moments after May approaches Riza with this idea for experimental alchemy-alkahestry, and hours before she actually enacts it, Riza sits down at the kitchen table with a few sheets of paper and a pen.

It’s somewhere past two in the morning, but Riza has been awake with May. The girl had gotten a glint in her eye after dinner, and her researching and notetaking had quickly reached furious levels. Recognizing the manic energy of an alchemist (alkahestrist? Riza wonders if there’s a word for that; surely there is) when she sees it, Riza helps Edward get the boys to bed and then rejoins May to lend whatever assistance she can.

She knows next to nothing about alchemy, and even less about alkahestry, so her help is mostly utilized in the form of refreshing their tea and nodding whenever May suddenly starts speaking in the middle of a thought.

_Useless,_ her brain whispers, an old reproach married to an old fear. An exhausted and incorrigible pairing. She rubs it away with more tea and more nodding.

She hasn’t been useless. She has looked through notes. She has provided food so Edward and May can keep looking through notes far more efficiently than she could.

Cooking was something she had started doing again in recent years, for the first time since childhood, and she hadn’t expected it to come in handy so directly. It was helpful for her personal life, after the first few months. After the existential dread dripped off the wooden spoons, siphoned out of the pans, leaving the common chore clean of her father’s neglect. But she hadn’t really expected to ever cook for anyone else.

She pointedly didn’t think about the fact that she was once again cooking for Roy Mustang _._ She didn’t want to consider the kind of symmetry that added to her life. It was unnecessary, unhelpful, and probably depressing if she thought about it too hard.

But even still, a large part of her latched onto May’s idea as it started forming. A way to give Alphonse and Mustang some years of their lives back, at the cost of someone else’s years.

Finally, she has something valuable to this equation: age. May and Edward are both teenagers, and mental maturity meant nothing when trading _years._ If either of them sacrificed years of their lives, it would have a significant impact and also cost them knowledge.

Riza knows nothing about alchemy, but she smiles grimly as she puts pen to paper. Because at last she is slipping into something familiar and comfortable. She knows nothing about alchemy, but she knows self-sacrifice for the greater good. And even beyond that, she knows about putting her eventual fate into Roy Mustang’s hands in order to ensure his present survival.

The part of her mind that always parses out the possible outcomes reminds her that eventually this gamble will fail her and she will not come back from whatever foolhardy mission she’s thrown herself into.

But that’s what a partnership is, Riza thinks. The General trusted her to come help him, and she’s trusting him to help her in return.

No matter how strange and unsure the connection had seemed between them in the last couple of years, this is fiercely familiar. He doesn’t always succeed in his endeavors, and he often takes on more than he can handle when she isn’t there to temper his ambition, but she knows without a single doubt that he will do his utmost to put everything right. And his utmost, in this situation, is much more helpful than her own.

Ordinarily, Riza drafts letters multiple times, fine tuning the wording and crossing out phrases entirely when she thinks she’s saying too much. But she can feel the press of the night as she writes, knows with a weight that might be entirely in her own mind that she has to _hurry_. They have to do this quickly, so she doesn’t reread her words and make sure they are as polite and formal as they ought to be. The General will understand. He’s seen worse, if May is right and he will only remember up through the end of the war.

Hands on her shoulders, shaking her as his voice screams through the echoing silence. A handkerchief, dusty and worn, wiping away vomit. Firm pressure on her wounds as her blood dribbles through his fingers.

Yes, she thinks, he’s certainly seen worse than a little stilted phrasing. Her main concern as she scribbles what she hopes is all she needs to say, is that some amount of her worry is seeping through the words. She doesn’t want to distract him with sentiment. He’s never had a lot of room for that.

So she does her best, and she doesn’t reread it when she finishes. Just hands it to May in a sealed envelope and tells her to give it to Mustang after.

After.

And then she goes to wake up the little boy who had been the biggest surprise she could never have expected.

* * *

_Colonel Mustang,_

_If everything has gone as expected, you are reading this as I am a young child with no memories of this situation. I am writing this beforehand in order to commit the sum of what I know to paper, in case it is of any help as you and Alphonse try to retrace your steps and figure out what went wrong with your initial transmutation._

_On June 1_ _ st _ _of this year, 1917, I received a call from you on an outside line. You had warned me about this phone call in a previous call from your office, using a code we set up soon after your establishment at a desk job after the war. (I apologize if you do not remember this code — I am unsure exactly at what point in your history this transmutation will leave you.)_

_You addressed the phone call to the code name we had established several years prior, if you remember that. The message you relayed to me on this call was also in the same code, merely stating: “RESEMBOOL.”_

_I was unsure exactly what you intended me to find here, but I took the train to Resembool immediately. I met Edward Elric, a trusted former subordinate of yours and also a former state alchemist, at the train station. He mentioned that his brother, Alphonse, another young alchemist you know and trust, had called him here as well._

_Assuming this could not be a coincidence, I followed Ed to Alphonse’s residence and found both of you in the middle of a transmutation that Ed didn’t recognize. When everything had concluded, Alphonse had regressed from a young man of seventeen years to a child of four. You had regressed from your thirty-two years to a child of ten._

_Edward and I attempted to discover what you two had done, with the aid of your younger self, but to no avail. There were no written notes anywhere, and we could not piece together a good enough picture. My lack of alchemical knowledge was a severe handicap in this endeavor._

_May Chang, an ally from a conflict two years ago (ask Ed or May or look up newspaper articles from April and May of 1915), arrived then to help. Her knowledge of alkahestry allowed her to discover a method that would add some years to both of you, but at cost of someone else’s. I was the obvious candidate for this exchange for multiple reasons._

_I must apologize that this leaves you all with the custody of my younger self. I was a bit silly at that age, as I think many children are — prone to outbursts of emotion. I had a tendency to create a burden of myself when not given explicit instructions. But overall I was a very hardy, self-sufficient, and obedient girl — so I hope she will not cause undue trouble._

_If you find yourselves in the unfortunate position of being stuck at these ages for the foreseeable future, I have already written the appropriate letters to handle my sudden retirement and made arrangements for the care of my child self. May is in possession of these letters and instructions. As I have no family, these letters and arrangements should be sufficient and will require little of anyone’s time and energy._

_I wish you all the best as you embark on this research._

_Your loyal lieutenant, always,_

_Captain Riza Hawkeye_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of Part 1. See you Sunday with an interlude before we start Part 2!
> 
> Thanks to everyone reading along! Comments are so appreciated. <3


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